I'm ba-ack! YES! I'm finally home, but boy, was the journey home a disaster. First my body spray cracked on the way to the airport in the car, spilling all over my suitcase. Then the plane journey was particularly painful on my ears, which it usually isn't. Then, on the way home from the airport, my little brother had a sore stomach and then started vomiting. Now, I get travel sick, anyway, and was already feeling sick, so the smell of Jack's just pushed me over the edge, though the many years of three-and-a-half hour journeys to Donegal in a stuffy car enabled me to hold it in mostly. My sister is the biggest baby I have ever met, despite being thirteen, and she started crying and saying that she was going to be sick too, with the smell and my retching - she was between us, you see - so I got out and walked the rest of the way, since we were about a 20 minute walk from the house and I've walked further. At least, I would have if my dad hadn't been able to come back and pick me up after emptying the car, by which point I was 5 minutes away.
Ah well, the rest of the holiday was great.
You know, I said on my profile page that I share many similar qualities with Hermione, but I don't think even I realised just how much. I mean, I'm pretty much acting the way she did in the Half-Blood Prince as the O.W.L. results are arriving about my GCSE results and they're coming in two days!
I'm really tempted to work more on the Narnia fanfics I'm writing but I need to finish 'XS HSM', 'Journey to the Past', this series and my FictionPress story first, and since I'll be back at school soon, updates won't be as frequent, especially since I'll be in sixth year, which means A-Levels! Aaaaah! Also, I want to re-read the books and re-watch the films before I write more of them, and I've recently become obsessed with 'Criminal Minds' and am almost finished series one, and almost finished series two of Numb3rs, along with having a list of about ten books I'm wanting to read, so... yeah, it could be a while...
I'm just thinking, should the title of this be 'Threestep' or 'Three Step'? Which makes more sense?
Please R&R!
Chapter Two
We arrived while the others were finishing up breakfast and I noticed that in addition to Carla, Maria, Alejandro and Pedro, there were two other young men at the table. I had never seen them before but, judging by their brunette hair and the familiar lime green eyes, I ascertained them to be the eldest Pedrosa boys – Juan and Carlos.
"How're you doing? You must be Kimiko." I figured this must be Carlos as he shook his hand, since I could feel the calluses and blisters on his fingers. Plus, he had a large shiny burn on one arm.
"I can fix that for you, if you want." I indicated the burn and his eyes furrowed in confusion.
"How? You're underage."
Rai smirked. "Trust me, she can fix it. Now, would you rather she did, or have that sting for the next week?"
Carlos shrugged and held out his burnt arm. I placed my finger on it and Carlos watched, wide-eyed in amazement, as the burn disappeared. "Wow." Juan murmured, both boys inspecting Carlos' arm.
"Thanks for that. We could really use that in Romania – the amount of times I've been burnt… Man, it hurts like a –"
"Carlos!" Carla cut across warningly.
"Sorry, mami."
"I had a lot of practice with that two years ago with Hagrid – well, especially a certain someone." I glared pointedly at Rai, who looked affronted.
"What? I was only trying to help Hagrid. Besides, I didn't do anything you didn't!"
"Yes," I said slowly, with the air of explaining something to a small child. "But it will hurt you, not me." He crossed his arms grumpily and I noticed the rest of his family laughing at us.
Juan shook my hand then. His hair, unlike the rest of the Pedrosa boys, was long and pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore an earring – a dangling fang – and that damn knowing expression most adults wore when they saw Rai and I bickering. What in the world was that about?
Carla ushered me into the kitchen, trying, as usual, to get me to eat something. "You're too thin!" she would implore, but I declined with the excuse that I had just had dinner.
Then I noticed that Clay and Omi were here too, but from where I had stood, they were out of my line of sight. "You guys made it, then?" Rai commented around a mouthful of bread, earning him a punch from me. But then he started choking. I sighed heavily, hiding my face in my hands in resignation, amid laughter from the others.
After breakfast, the four of us headed up to Rai's room and as soon as we walked through the door, the tiny little owl Sirius had given Clay at the end of last year zoomed around our heads, twittering madly. "Shut up, Pig." Rai swatted the bird away.
"Uh, why are you calling that owl Pig?"
"Because he's being stupid." Clay responded with a shrug. "His proper name is Pigwidgeon."
"Yeah, and that's not stupid at all." Rai rolled his eyes sarcastically.
"Jesse named him." Clay offered by way of explanation. "We have to keep him up here 'cause he annoys Errol and Hermes."
"Hermes?"
"Pedro's owl. Mum and dad got it for him when he got the job at the Ministry. Have you heard from Sirius over the summer?"
"A few times, yeah. Sent tropical birds, so I think he's somewhere south. I almost wrote to him this morning – I had this weird dream…" I explained the dream and they stared at me.
"I reckon you should've told him." Clay said grimly.
"But it couldn't be real…could it?"
"I don't know, Rai." I shrugged, ignoring Clay and Omi as they raised their eyebrows, exchanged glances and mouthed 'Rai' with amused grins on their faces. "Remember Trelawney's prediction last year? 'Servant and Master shall be reunited once more'. Now, I'd be the first to day that Trelawney's a fraud, but I swear, that one was real."
After a while I left to hang out with Maria and judging by the manic grins on both Clay and Omi's faces, I had just left Rai for a world of teasing.
When we were sufficiently caught up on each other's gossip, Maria and I trooped downstairs to see if we could help Carla with dinner, running into the boys on the stairs. Omi and Clay were wearing satisfied grins and Rai's cheeks were sporting the remnants of a blush.
"We're eating out in the garden; there's simply not enough room in here for thirteen people. Could you take the plates outside, girls? And boys, can you take the cutlery? Juan and Carlos are setting up the tables."
However, when we did get outside, we found Juan and Carlos weren't setting up the tables, but duelling with them in mid-air. We whooped and cheered as Juan's caught Carlos' and knocked off one of its legs. "Will you keep it down?"
We looked up to see Pedro sticking his head out of his bedroom window. "Sorry, Pedro," Juan called up, still grinning. "How're the cauldron bottoms doing?" But Pedro merely huffed and slammed his window shut again.
"I take it Pedro likes work?" I muttered as Juan and Carlos righted the tables.
"Enjoying it?" Rai scoffed. "I don't reckon he'd come home if dad didn't make him."
"He's obsessed!" Ricardo agreed.
"Yeah, just don't get him started on his boss." Fernando warned as Ricardo began to imitate Pedro.
"According to Mr Crouch… As I was saying to Mr Crouch… Mr Crouch is of the opinion… Mr Crouch was telling me… They'll be announcing their engagement any day now,"
Dinner in the Pedrosa household was as delicious as I remembered. Every bit as delicious as Hogwarts, in my opinion. As we gorged ourselves on Carla's wonderful cooking, the conversation soon turned to Quidditch. Well, it was inevitable, since it was the reason we're all here. Okay, when I say everyone talked about Quidditch, I mean the boys and me.
Pedro was talking with Antonio about - you guessed it - his boss, Mr Crouch. Apparently Rai and the twins hadn't been exaggerating. They mentioned a man named Ludo Bagman and a woman – Bertha Jorkins – whose name I had heard before – in my dream. They were discussing her status as missing, but I knew from my dream that she was already dead. That is, if my dream was real…
They also made reference to a 'top secret event', Pedro clearing his throat significantly and looking towards the seven of us still in Hogwarts as he did. "He's been trying to get us to ask what that event is ever since he started work." Rai muttered. "Probably an exhibition of thick-bottomed cauldrons."
At the other end of the table, Carla was arguing with Juan about his earring. "…with a horrible great fang on it!" she was saying. "Really, Juan, what do they say at the bank?"
It looked as though it took a lot of effort for Juan not to roll his eyes, but he spoke patiently. "Mum, no one at the bank gives a damn how I dress, as long as I bring back plenty of treasure."
"And your hair's getting a bit silly, dear, I wish you'd let me give it a trim…" she fingered her wand as if longing to do so.
"I like it." Maria cut in. "You're so old fashioned, mum. Anyway, it's nowhere near as long as Hagrid's…"
In the middle of the table the twins, Carlos, Rai, Clay, Omi and I were discussing Quidditch, with Alejandro watching and listening intently. "It's got to be Ireland." Carlos was saying. "They flattened Peru in the semi-finals."
"Bulgaria have got Viktor Krum, though." Fernando argued.
"Okay, so that means Bulgaria has one decent player, while Ireland has seen seven pretty great ones who work well together." Rai threw back at them and Carlos choked on his food.
"You call Krum a decent player?" He asked incredulously.
"Yeah." Rai shrugged and the twins nodded their assent.
"Oh!" Ricardo seemed to come to a sudden realisation. "Of course, you haven't seen Kimiko play."
Okay, now I was really confused. What had I to do with whether or not a guy was a decent Quidditch player?
"Alright then. How about we play after dinner?"
"Sure. Hey, Juan, you game for Quidditch after dinner?"
"You bet."
"Not too late – you have an early start tomorrow."
After dinner we got our brooms and headed down behind the orchard to play. "Right, so Fernando and Ricardo are beaters; Clay and Omi can play keepers; Carlos are seekers; so that leaves you and I, Juan, as chasers."
"No!" Juan moaned good-naturedly. "I don't wanna play chaser against you!"
"Well, tough!" Rai called back as we rose into the air and our positions.
It was Omi, Rai, Ricardo and me against Clay, Juan, Fernando and Carlos. Ricardo looked ecstatic while Fernando pouted. "That's not fair! You have the better team!"
"Too bad!"
"Oh, come on Fernando, stop whining and let's start the game!" Maria called from her spot as referee. The rest of the Pedrosas had turned up to watch.
Almost as soon as the match got underway, our team had the upper hand. Neither Clay nor Omi were particularly good fliers, but their instincts and speed allowed them to block quite a few goals.
Juan had scored one goal to Rai's ten when I saw it. It was fluttering along the grass directly below me, so I dived. Straight down. I grabbed the golf ball Carlos had charmed to behave like a snitch in my hand and pulled out of my dive milliseconds before I hit the ground, spiralling upwards to meet the others up in the air. I was back before Carlos had time to react to my absence.
While my team-mates congratulating me, I saw Juan and Carlos staring at me in shock. Carla and Antonio had pretty much the same expressions from their positions on the ground and beside them, Alejandro was clapping happily.
"Yeah." Carlos spoke up, blinking. "I get your point. Krum is a decent player." Juan nodded mutely.
"Look at the time!" Carla exclaimed suddenly. "You must be exhausted! You really should be in bed; the whole lot of you, you'll be up at the crack of dawn to get to the Cup. If you all leave your school lists out, I'll get your things for you tomorrow in Diagon Alley. There might not be time after the World Cup. The match went on for five days last time."
"I hope it does this time!" I said excitedly as we vegan to climb the stairs. Five days of straight Quidditch – how awesome is that!
"Well, I certainly don't!" sniffed Pedro. "I shudder to think what the state of my in-tray would be if I was away from work for five days."
"Yeah, someone might slip dragon dung in it again, eh, Pedro?" Ricardo grinned teasingly.
Pedro went quite red and hissed, "That was a sample of fertiliser from Norway! It was nothing personal!"
"It was." Ricardo whispered as we reached Pedro's bedroom and he slammed the door shut. "We sent it."
By the time I reached Maria's room, my exhaustion finally hit me. I was still running on Tokyo time, and so I had been awake for over 24 hours. I crawled into bed and fell immediately into a – thankfully – dreamless sleep.
I have the next four chapters written but I'm absolutely exhausted so I'm going to sleep now, since it's 2:55 am and I had hardly any sleep last night. I'll try to update more tomorrow. Hopefully it will distract me from the fact that my GCSE results will be coming the next day...
